B&W Shooting from the hip

B&W Shooting from the hip
Asbury Park, NJ
I did no editing but a resize
No look shot, camera at my waist

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Perhaps it could be rendered a little brighter and with a bit more contrast in the mid-tones.

Hi Bob, thanks for the advice. Question: I am totally new to Photoshop 7 at this point. I plan on making the switch 100% to B&W photography. Is there a superior program for B&W image editing than photoshop? I admit, the image above is pretty horrible but I did take a lot of good B&W shots today (about 350). I am colorblind, so I am "giving up" on RBG as I think its going to be a wasted effort. Thanks for any advice.

looks to be a little vignetting in the corners...but yeah it needs more contrast IMO.

what do you think of this:

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Hmm. Second image is sharper..perhaps too sharp. Somewhere in the conversion, the dog has lost his detail. He looks like a cutout or silhouette on my monitor. Could we see the original colour image or was it shot in B&W (not a good idea IMHO)?

You have a little vignetting in Top R&L corner that needs to be removed. No biggie though. I'm surprised the 17-85 would produce any!

I like the feel of the photo, perhaps compose with the subjects off-centre?

Colour vision deficiency shouldn't stop you from shooting colour. Have someone else PP for you. But I can understand your frustration. 1 in 12 males have some form of colour vision problem.

Keep up the good work.

Paul

It was shot in monochrome only. Not sure what caused the vignetting. Perhaps it was the way it was shot, from the hip with no formal composition. Being new at B&W and more serious photography, I have yet to pick up on some of these blatant mistakes. The salesman at the camera store also said to shoot in RGB even if I'm doing black and white, then desaturating the image when it's time to convert it, avoiding grayscale conversion. Is that right? Im new at this but, why wouldnt I just set my camera at monochrome like yesterday instead of taking all RGB images then converting? I need to know that. Higher quality? Help! Thanks. I just have that above image in monochrome.

Here's a tulip that was color but then desaturized in photoshop...

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Shooting in colour first gives you many more options to convert to B&W. There are many programs on the 'net (free ones too) that plug into Photoshop that will do a great job on converting for you.

Always shoot at highest resolution AND in colour.

Happy captures!

Paul

Your second version definitely has better tonality.

I suspect that the small amount of vignetting in the upper right corner is some anomaly that came about during the post processing. I don't see how it could be due to a lens shade, because it's only noticeable in the upper right.

I can't tell what camera you are using because your EXIF data is not embedded in the image.

I cannot suggest any reason for upgrading from PS 7.0 if you plan to do just B&W. There is a separate forum at this link:
http://www.digital-monochrome.com/

You may be interesting in joining that group in that everyone there has a strong interest in digital B&W. Frankly, even tho I have a long standing preference for monochrome photography, since I got into digital I no longer have an excuse for ignoring color

Thanks Bob, I went and joined that forum. Looks good.